Hinduism and other religions

"Brahmanism had always been tolerant; in all the history of the rise and fall of Buddhism and a hundred other sects we find much disputation, but no instance of persecution."

"It is nobody’s case that there was never any conflict among the sects and sub-sects of Sanãtana Dharma. Some instances of persecution were indeed there. Our plea is that they should be seen in a proper perspective, and not exaggerated in order to whitewash or counter-balance the record of Islamic intolerance. Firstly, the instances are few and far between when compared to those listed in Islamic annals. Secondly, those instances are spread over several millennia while the fourteen centuries of Islam stand crowded with religious crimes of all sorts. Thirdly, none of those instances were inspired by a theology, while in the case of Islam a theology of intolerance has continued to question the character of Muslim kings who happened to be tolerant. Fourthly, Jains were not always the victims of persecution; they were persecutors as well once in a while. Lastly, no king or commander or saint who showed intolerance has been a Hindu hero, while Islam has hailed as heroes only those characters who excelled in intolerance."

"The success of the missions need not have been so meagre but for certain factors which may be discussed now. In the first place, the missionary brought with him an attitude of moral superiority and a belief in his own exclusive righteousness. The doctrine of the monopoly of truth and revelation, as claimed by William of Aubruck to Batu Khan when he said he that believeth not shall be condemned by God, is alien to the Hindu and Buddhist mind. To them the claim of any sect that it alone possesses the truth and others shall be `condemned has always seemed unreasonable."

"Apologists for Islam, as well as some Marxist scholars in India, have sometimes attempted to reduce Islamic iconoclasm in India to a gratuitous ‘lust for plunder’ on the part of the Muslims, unrelated in any direct way to the religion itself, while depicting Hindu temples as centers of political resistance which had to be suppressed. Concomitantly, instances have been described in the popular press of Hindu destruction of Buddhist and Jain places of worship, and the idea was promoted that archaeological evidence shows this to have happened on a large scale, and hence that Hindu kings could be placed on a par with the Muslim invaders. The fact is that evidence for such ‘Hindu iconoclasm’ is incidental, relating to mere destruction, and too vague to be convincing."

"Incidentally, we have borrowed from the speaker the term “minorities”. As Rajiv Malhotra has pointed out, this term carries a wrong but intentional connotation. The Christian and Muslim communities are not only historically privileged, they are also Indian branches of multinational enterprises, benefactors of worldwide networks of solidarity. The term “minority” evokes a poor hapless group, and that is precisely what Muslims and Christians are not. For materialists, this can be explained with the money streams: both the said communities are the benefactors of enormous sums of money coming from abroad, especially but not exclusively in their religious functioning. Hindus have no such thing: even the remittances from Hindus settled abroad are far smaller and are, after all, generated by people with roots in India, not by non-Indian donors."